fat shaming

All posts in the fat shaming category

Hey lovelies. I’ve been quiet for a bit haven’t I? Well something has brought me out of the woodwork today and steaming from the ears. The lovely Em aka Boombands from Oh The Places You’ll Go drew my attention via her Twitter to a project this morning called Stop Dating Like a Fat Chick. Em quite rightfully pointed out just how problematic the project was, and the author of it directed her to this page Who You Callin’ A Fat Chick? When I read it, I can tell you, I felt kind of sick.

Firstly, most of you already know, I’m a fat chick. I’m also a single fat chick. Apparently, being a fat chick is a BAD THING. The author of the blog/book, Adrienne Santos-Longhurst says that she is offering “the no BS guide to dating with confidence for the plus size girl” – so let me just get this right. Being a plus size girl is ok, but being a fat chick is not. Indeed, that is what she says at the top of the page… “If you let your size dictate how and who you date then YOU, my dear, are a Fat Chick.”

Sounds like Ms Santos-Longhurst is buying into the old “No Fat Chicks” bullshit that plenty of douchecanoes have been labelling women that they think they’re superior to for a long, long time. We’re getting into some good fatty/bad fatty territory with this stuff.

Now that we’ve established that being a fat chick is a VERY BAD THING, and that to become a fat chick you only have to identify as fat and choose people to date and how you date them with relevence to your fatness. So, that means that because I identify as a fat chick, and because I only date people who accept (and appreciate) my fatness and understand my self-identifying as fat, I “date like a fat chick”. And that is a VERY BAD THING.

To be fair, I do everything like a fat chick. I breathe like a fat chick. I sleep like a fat chick. I dress like a fat chick. Because… I AM a fat chick!

According to Ms Santos-Longhurst, dating like a fat chick is a bad thing. On her page, she outlines why this is a bad thing, because apparently fat chicks do the following:

- always the best friend who chums around with a guy and even gives him advice about other women all while pining after him.

-the easy lay who has sex with any and everyone because they feel it’s the only way to get the affection and attention they crave.

- the needy and desperate woman who gets walked all over and jumps through hoops to keep a man in fear that no one else will want her.

-women who limit their dating to fat-friendly sites or even limit themselves to specific races who are said to prefer fat women because they fear they’ll be rejected by dating the “regular” way.

That’s a whole lot of assumptions to make about how fat chicks behave when dating. Not to mention a whole lot of very negative assumptions. Now, speaking for myself, that’s not really my method in the dating world, so it’s a pretty rich assumption to make about how we fat chicks date. But hey, some fat chicks do date like that (so do a lot of thin chicks) and it’s a pretty hostile attitude to hold towards the way some women choose to date. I’ll come back to that a bit later.

I understand that some of the underlying message Ms Santos-Longhurst is trying to get at is that many fat women suffer from confidence and self-esteem issues. That no doubt comes from a genuine, good place of wanting to help. But… this doesn’t help. Shaming women, particularly fat women who are already shamed at every turn, for having low self-esteem and lacking confidence, is not going to help them. Saying “Men treat you badly because you act like a doormat.” lays the blame at the feet of the victim, not the perpetrator. It’s not anyone’s fault that someone treats them badly – ever. If someone is treating you like a doormat, then they are the one who are behaving badly and should be shamed, not you. This is a very victim-blaming methodology that Ms Santos-Longhurst has adopted.

I also have a problem with the whole desperate/needy cliché. Have you ever noticed how often the concept of desperate/needy are applied mostly to women? That somehow, women when they have feelings for someone and want them reciprocated are desperate and needy, but when men do the same it’s coded as romantic, devoted, determined. With a caveat – thin, pretty women are sometimes allowed to be romantic/devoted/determined. But fat chicks – if we have feelings and want them reciprocated, ew gross, don’t be so needy! Don’t be so desperate!

Unrequited feelings are messy. We’ve all been there. But the answer is not deciding that you’re pathetic for having unrequited feelings. The answer is realising that we’ve all been there, and that it is possible to get past those feelings and move on with your life. The answer is going “Well, if you don’t like me, that’s your loss.” and not letting it smash your self-esteem even further. It’s not hating yourself for those feelings.

The next thing that brings me to is the idea of women who limit their dating to fat-friendly sites or people who prefer fat women. Let’s just note the inherent racism in the way Ms Santos-Longhurst has framed it too – she hasn’t named any particular race but most of us already know that very racist stereotype. Some fat women do indeed stick to fat-friendly dating environments. And that is perfectly acceptable. There is nothing wrong with choosing to involve yourself in community and environments that accept you and understand you and are tailored for you. I’m not saying that those environments aren’t fraught with issues, but let’s face it, who hasn’t been objectified or fetishised while walking down the street, or on some non-fat-focused website? I also find it deeply problematic that she seems to exclude these environments from what she calls “dating the regular way”. What is dating the regular way? He comes over and is interrogated by your father first? Writes in your dance card? Takes you to for coffee the first date, dinner the second date, movies the third? The assumption that there actually is some “regular” way to date in 2014 is pretty crappy. People meet one another and date all kinds of different ways. Sometimes they meet at work, or through friends, or on a dating site, through a kink club, or sometimes they fuck outside a nightclub and then realise that they’re meant for each other. All of them are valid ways to date. There is no “regular” way that is more acceptable than any other.

Which brings me to the thing that REALLY made me go “Oh hell no!” Yes, that big old stinking pile of slut shaming there on point two. That silly fat girl who is an “easy lay” – the dirty slut! Here’s the thing folks. Fuck any consenting adult you want to fuck, as many times as you want to fuck them. Whether you think they’re the love of your life, or you just want to come and a cuddle. Fuck a bunch of consenting adults if you want to. So long as everyone involved is a consenting adult, fuck away to your heart’s content. That doesn’t make you an “easy lay” and there’s nothing at all wrong with having a whole bunch of sex if that’s what you want to do. There’s nothing wrong with having NO sex if that’s what you want. There’s nothing wrong with having a bit of sex if that works for you too. Darlings, you get to decide that. Anyone who shames you for your sexuality when it is between consenting adults is a jerk.

Again, I get the underlying thing Ms Santos-Longhurst is getting at is about confidence and self-esteem, but unfortunately the way she is going about it is damaging to a whole lot of people’s confidence and self-esteem. Instead of telling “fat chicks” that “you’re doing it wrong and it’s all your fault”, I believe the way to build women’s confidence is to point out just how valid their feelings are, to establish that we are the ones who have final say over our own lives and our own bodies, and the biggie – show them that other people’s shitty behaviour is not their fault.

If you’re a fat chick, and are finding the whole dating thing awkward and painful and embarrassing… guess what? That’s normal! Dating and relationships are weird and awkward and sometimes painful for everybody. They’re also wonderful and rewarding and delicious sometimes too. But they’re not perfect. They’re work. The fairytale is just that… a fairytale.

But here’s to all the fat chicks who live their lives like fat chicks. Don’t let anyone shame you for being a fat chick.

I don’t know if you’ve all seen this snippet from the TV show Louie, but it has done the rounds of the fatosphere quite a bit over the past few days. Just in case you haven’t seen it, or want to refresh your memory, here it is again.

I’m not a watcher of Louie, and I have mixed feelings about Louis CK, and his show as a vehicle for social politics, but I want to move away from that aspect just now. That’s a conversation for another time.

This clip has garnered a lot of criticism within fat activism circles. Some of it is valid criticism, some of it I disagree with because I think it is viewed through a lens of privilege and internalised misogyny as well. I’m going to do more than one post about it, so please hang in there ok, and we’ll hit the issues up one by one.

But for me, well, I connected with it very deeply. Not only because Sarah Baker gives one hell of a performance, but because she voices a lot of things I feel and think. I have a lot of thoughts on being a fat woman and dating, but I think those are for another time. I will actually have a post on that coming up soon.

What I want us all to focus on here is the statement that seems to have got the most criticism. “It sucks being a fat girl.”

So many people have complained about this, saying that it doesn’t suck to be a fat girl and that her saying it sends a “bad message” to the rest of the world, that it’s “so negative, we can’t see it as a win.”

Well I’m going to be the one to say it as a real life fat woman.

It sucks to be a fat woman.

It really does. But not because of physically being fat. It doesn’t suck having a fat body, that doesn’t bother me in the slightest. It sucks to be a fat woman in a world that treats us as second-class citizens.

It sucks to be treated with contempt, derision, ridicule and outright hatred.

It sucks to have a lot of men act like their dick is going to fall off if they are seen with you in public.

It sucks to be sneered and tutted at on public transport as though you don’t have the right to be there.

It sucks to go to the doctor for a cold or a sore toe and be lectured on your weight instead of being given treatment.

It sucks that retailers who know they could make very good money off you refuse to stock reasonable quality, fashionable clothing at a reasonable price because they don’t want to lose their thin customers who wouldn’t be seen dead in the same outfit as a fat woman.

It sucks to have random men scream abuse at you in the street.

It sucks to get hate mail and trolling because you dare to be a visible fat woman.

It sucks that furniture often isn’t made to include your body.

It sucks that you can’t turn on the television or open a magazine without being shamed for your body.

It sucks that strangers take your photo in public without your consent.

It sucks to be a fat woman.

I find the whole idea that we must be positive at all times, and only represent the good things about being fat at all times really damaging. It’s not helping anyone to expect that fat women are always depicted as everything being perfect and rosy. Or that we’re 100% arse kicking, take no prisoners, school every nasty dude that crosses our path at every moment of our lives. Not only does it provide a false sense of “Everything’s fine!” to not fat people, but it doesn’t help we fatties. It doesn’t help we fatties to think that so long as you’ve got good self esteem and don’t hate your body, suddenly the world gets all sunshine and roses. It doesn’t. People told me back in my self hating days that when I learned to build my self esteem and be confident, people wouldn’t be as horrible to me as they were when I hated myself. That’s a blatant lie. It doesn’t go away. It doesn’t get better.

What does change when you find self esteem and confidence is YOU. You get better. Not better as a person – you were already perfectly fine even before you found self esteem and confidence. But better at dealing with the crap. Better at valuing yourself. Better at realising that other people’s crappy behaviour is no reflection on you. Better at self care to deal with other people’s horrible attitudes. Better at advocating for yourself. Better at saying no. Better at shrugging off the haters and living your life anyway.

I also don’t want us to have to deny any vulnerability. You know what, people are shitty to and about fat people, and it’s hurtful and bloody stressful! We’re dealing with a constant level of stress that thin people generally don’t have to think about. Will I physically fit in that furniture? Will people be rude to me for taking up too much space? Is the doctor going to take me give me treatment or are they just going to prescribe a diet? Can I take a walk without someone mooing at me and calling me a fat bitch? Will I be able to find a suitable outfit in my size for a job interview?

But most importantly, the answer to “Being a fat woman sucks.” is not “Well become a thin woman then.” Firstly because there is no proven way to do that and secondly because our bodies are not the problem – our culture is.

Note: Please keep to topic in the comments and any “But thin people have it hard too!” denial of privilege will be sent to the spam bin and banned from commenting permanently.

I had planned to write some more about #notyourgoodfatty tonight but I had something happen to me on Saturday night that has really been bothering me and I want to talk about it and why it happens. Not to mention the feeling it leaves with the people it happens to.

I’d had a lovely day on Saturday. I had a delicious brunch with one of my best buds and her adorable doggie, then we went for a paddle down on the waterfront near my home. The water had been so lovely, warm and relaxing, like a bath. We had a little chill time by the bay, and then we went and saw Captain America: The Winter Soldier in Gold Class, which is always an indulgent experience, cosied up in those comfy recliners in a sparsely populated cinema. My friend dropped me home and I decided to nip up to the local Chinese restaurant to get myself a stir fry for dinner, since I had been out all day and was a wee bit sun burnt.

So there I was, sitting in the Chinese restaurant, minding my own business while I was waiting for my dinner. I was reading Instagram and Twitter on my phone, when this kid of about 16 or 17 rolls up to the doors of the restaurant on his bike, and it seems like he’s talking on his phone, but he walks right into the restaurant, holds his phone up to my face, and takes a picture of me – he even left the sound and flash on so I knew exactly what he did and knew his headphones weren’t plugged in. Without any attempt to hide what he is doing or any embarrassment on his part. As he does that, the girl on the counter asks him what he would like to order and he says “Oh… I dunno, hang on a minute” and then just walks out, gets on his bike and rides away.

Now I am not easily shocked by people being shitty to me in public, but this one just had me absolutely stunned. It was like I couldn’t register what he had done. I’m used to people sneaking photos of me (I now photograph them back and post them to my Tumblr) and I don’t doubt there are all sorts of shitty posts out there with my photo and people being douchebags about my body and my appearance. But to have someone just blatantly walk up to me, frame me up right in front of me and take my photo, and then walk away without batting an eyelid just gobsmacked me.

It honestly wasn’t until a couple of hours later that it sank in what he had done, and I can tell you, I felt so violated. It hit me like a wall, this feeling of being violated, assaulted. I think I had to get past the initial shock for it to register just how it made me feel. Usually when people try to take photos of me, they try to sneak it thinking I won’t know (I usually do) and at least have the humanity to look embarrassed when they are busted. Some of them even get pissed that I take their photo back. But this kid had no shame at all, spared no thought for whether or not I knew what he was doing, or how I might feel about being photographed by some complete stranger. My shocked response clearly meant nothing, and who knows where the hell that photo will turn up online.

The thing is, this is what happens when society demonises fat people so much that we are considered sub-human. People like this kid don’t see me as a person, because they’re bombarded with the message day in and day out that fat people are diseased, defective, less than. So our feelings, and our rights, matter nothing to them. Every time they see a headless fatty in the media, it gives them a message that we’re nothing more than a pile of fat. Every time they hear that fatness is a disease, it removes our personhood from their minds. So they have absolutely no qualms in behaving in such an invasive, abusive way toward us.

This isn’t the only thing that happens to us because of the dehumanisation of fat people in the media, but is simply one prime example. Every time we are subjected to abuse and harassment, every time we have someone yell at us from a passing car, every time someone tuts or scowls at us for taking up space on public transport or in other public places, every time someone passes comment on what we eat or do with our bodies, right down to every time someone targets us online for abuse (on our blogs and other social media spaces), these are not because we are fat and somehow cause this abuse ourselves. It is because the constant message from marketing and media tells people that we are sub-human, and then people who are broken and bigoted enough to believe that propaganda act on it.

But it’s not “normal” to spend your life harassing or bullying or abusing people. If these bigots want to talk about what is healthy, they need to look in the mirror first. It’s not emotionally or intellectually healthy to dehumanise other people. It’s not emotionally or intellectually healthy to be abusive or bullying. It is an unevolved, narrow mind that feels they have the right to police other people’s lives and bodies. Only those who are not comfortable and happy in who they are themselves are going to spend their lives looking for opportunities to harass and belittle others. People who are emotionally and intellectually healthy are far too busy focusing on their own lives, and those of the people they love to spend time harassing and bullying others.

The problem does not lie with us. We are not the ones who are damaged here. It is not our fault that we are abused by those who are so messed up that they genuinely believe that it’s a worthwhile pastime to abuse, harass and bully people.

One of the best things about being a fat activist is the community that you get to be part of. Thanks to my work in fat activism I’ve been able to meet (both online and off), some of the most amazing people, a number of whom I now call good friends. Of course, there are those who treat fat activists like we are some kind of giant hive mind that all think the same things and have had exactly the same experiences in life, but that’s not true. I’ve met fat activists from all walks of life, some of us get along really well, some of us disagree vehemently and some of us simply don’t like one another as people. That’s good in a way – it shows we’re have a good balance of people, approaching fat activism from all angles. It means we have robust discussions that nut out all the thorny bits of activism.

Another great thing is that we share resources. Recently I was lucky enough to have bestowed upon me a fantastic collection of fat studies reference books by a fellow fat activist who was moving house at the time and needing to downsize her library. It was an absolute joy to have parcel after parcel arrive in my PO Box full of books about fat. Check these glorious piles of literary goodness out:

One of the things that struck me as I catalogued these into my own collection (yes, ever the librarian) was that people have been talking about fat politics, and particularly fat stigma and fat hatred, for a very long time. This collection alone spans about thirty years, and it is by no means a complete collection of fat studies works. These titles approach fat politics from almost every angle imaginable – sexuality, health, feminism, fiction, media, sociology, childhood development, eating disorders, psychology, food, exercise… you name it and someone has raised the topic in relation to fat politics in one of these books.

To put it bluntly, people have been talking about this shit for a long time and from a lot of perspectives.

However, listen to any of the many (and boy are there many) critics of fat activism, they will have it that we’re just making this stuff up as we go along. It usually falls into two categories – either that we’re in some kind of denial about how horrible fat is, or that we’re just trying to find ways to “justify” being fat. Let’s put aside the fact that I personally don’t focus on justification of my fatness – I am fat, the reasons are irrelevant – but am focusing on fat people’s right to live their life with dignity and respect, and without discrimination or persecution, no matter what in their life led them to be fat. We’ll also put aside that I’m in no denial that there are negative issues that correlate with being fat, but are not caused BY being fat, and don’t forget to include those issues that are caused by society’s loathing of fat.

But here in these books, and the many more out there, you have evidence that people have been examining fatness and society’s attitude towards fatness for a very long time. I’m not the first person to discuss the subjects I do here on this blog, I’m certainly not the most formally educated person to examine the subjects I do here on this blog, and I’m definitely not making this shit up as I go along. Unlike the majority of those who criticise fat activism, I spend an awful lot of time researching fatness, it’s effect on people and how society responds to it. I certainly have not yet read all of these books, but I’ve spent almost 5 years reading an awful lot of them, along with an incredible amount of material online from all perspectives, which is a lot more than can be said from the average fat hating commenter who turns up with “But! But! But! EVERYBODY KNOWS fat is bad!!” Despite the fact that there is an incredible amount of material published from all over the world that disputes that supposed “everybody knows” knowledge.

The one thing I do know – fat haters do not present us with any new information or perspectives and have not done so for a very, very long time. The very same arguments that the earliest of fat studies literature responds to are the same arguments that we are presented with today. One would think, considering the amount of information we have presented over the past 30+ years as to why fat stigma and fat loathing are so damaging and erroneous, that a new perspective or new information would have come into play from the anti-fat brigade. But alas, no.

What I do know is that there are people who have far more qualifications after their name than myself, and certainly more than the majority of the anti-fat brigade, listed amongst the authors of these books. These are a learned bunch, and they’ve got very important things to say, and the evidence to back it up.

Something you will hear often in fat activism is “Educate yourself.” Because it’s not our job to educate you in our oppression and how it affects us. Many of us have spent years educating ourselves in the subject, we’ve spent our own time, money and energy to learn what we have learnt as fat activists. If you wish to engage in the subject and dispute us, the least you can do is educate yourself. Of course, there are always those that have excuses, saying they don’t know where to start or can’t find resources (Google is your friend people!)

However, I’m going to do something very generous. I’ve created a resources page here on this blog, where I’ve listed all of the books in this collection, and others that I have read. Now I know not everyone can afford all of these books, but you see, I’m a librarian, so I’m more than happy to encourage you to go and get a library card to get your hands on these resources. If your library doesn’t have them, talk to your local librarians and ask them if they can add them to their collection, or organise an inter-library loan for you. Librarians LOVE help with collection development, it’s a big job, any help we can get is always welcome.

For those of you who genuinely want to broaden your horizons and hear about the experiences of fat people, especially for those of you who are fat yourselves and need to know you’re not alone, this is a good place to start.

If you know of any other great resources, please feel free to leave them in the comments and I will add them to my “to read” list.

I was feeling like crud. Stomping my way in to work this morning, really fighting with the black dog of depression, feeling like dirt. And there she was. An angel in a floral skirt and cream top. The young woman I had been standing beside at the lights about 10 minutes before – I had been staring at the print of her skirt trying to grasp the one thing that was nice in my brain at just that moment – a pretty pink floral. I was walking back towards my office having stopped off in the markets to pick up some breakfast, when she stopped me on the street and told me that she really loved my blog, and that even though I hadn’t posted in a while she still hoped I would. She complimented my taste in clothes, mentioned that we had the same dress (the hot pink one from Autograph) and that she loved my fatshion reviews. I was a bit flabbergasted and I forgot to ask her name, which I always do, because it always takes me by surprise. She made me smile, she thanked me and touch my arm, and we parted.

Five minutes later I was sobbing in the ladies room at work, finally able to feel something. That’s what depression does to you, it robs your ability to feel. You might walk around talking and even smiling and laughing, but you don’t really feel it, instead you’re kind of just going through the motions, performing as yourself instead of being yourself. At least that’s what it does to me. I wasn’t crying because something had upset me, I was crying because I’d finally felt something (surprise, pleasure, even a glimmer of joy) and that caused the floodgates of all the feelings I haven’t been able to feel for weeks to open and let them all out. The crying was a good thing. Embarrassing and uncomfortable, but ultimately good for me.

The past months have been hellish for me with my depression creeping up stronger than it has for some time. It isn’t just the usual chemical stuff either, usually brought on by hormones and stress, I began to recognise it a few weeks ago. It was emotional burnout. It had all got too much for me. My job is a bigger workload than it has ever been (it’s that way for everyone at my work these days) and I feel like Sisyphus, having to roll the same boulder up the hill every day only to have it roll down again. (If only it was like Loki, burdened with glorious purpose.)

Add to that the fact that I’d been doing fat activism for over four years, 95% of it for free, out of my own time, pocket, talent and energy only to be constantly bombarded both by general hate as a random fat person on this earth, and deeply targeted hate from really fucked up people out there who cannot bear the thought of an unapologetic and even proud fat woman existing on the planet. Even still, even though I haven’t posted in months, there are days when I get over 4000 hits via a Reddit hate forum alone, filled with people who spend hours and hours of their lives hating on me and other visible fat people for a hobby. They dig up old posts, they steal the photos from this blog (and my Tumblr or Instagram, or Twitter, or Facebook), they spend hours and hours and hours discussing my life in minutiae… as a hobby.

One nutter even keeps a dossier on every food post I ever make online and keeps tabs on what I eat (or at least the bits I post online) and then crops up on old articles about me, or anything I comment on online to try to “discredit” me by “proving” that I’m a “liar” because of how “unhealthy” I am using the posts about food as “evidence”. They send me long, rambling emails detailing how many calories are in every item of food I post, and how each morsel is hardening my arteries and sending me to my grave. Who has time in their life to do this shit?

As much as I block, spam and filter all of that hate, it still gets through. I still see bits of it. I still see the referring links on my dashboard of my blog posts, all coming from a Reddit fat hate forum. I still see old blog posts targeted by thousands and thousands of people in one day. I still see the hate comments that I have to delete, block as spam, report as abuse. As much as I rationally know that their hate is not about me, it’s no reflection of me and my worth, it’s still toxic. I’m still being bathed in this venom all the time. Some of it has got to sink through my skin. I am a human being, I do have feelings and I’m not made of steel. People can hurt me. This shit eventually does hurt me. There is no shame in my being human, and vulnerable.

However, that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of it was that all that hate and harassment robbed me of the one thing that is most precious to me – my ability to write. It did EXACTLY what they wanted it to do, it silenced me. I was so battle scarred by all of that shit that the minute I started to write anything, instinctively I shut down, as a protection mode. My brain would simply block any flow of thought, any language out of sheer self-protection against the rightly anticipated onslaught of hate and harassment. I had the worst case of writers block I have ever had, because it wasn’t just fatigue or lack of creativity, it was like a great big door slamming shut in my brain and locking all the good stuff in to where I could not reach it, and to further the torture, I knew it was still in there but it was out of my grasp. This is what caused me to spiral further and further into depression. The more I couldn’t write, the more depressed I got, and the more I felt like I had abandoned my activism, and the more it made me depressed, which then blocked me from writing… and so on.

Yet today, a living angel pops into my life and reminds me just why I became a fat activist. Who reminded me that what I do matters to more than just me. Who jolted me out of the bleak headspace and reminded me that by letting all the shit that the haters heap on me STAY on me, they don’t win – nobody with that much hate in themselves actually wins anything, but WE lose. We lose community, we lose our voice, we lose visibility and we lose strength. This is how they wear us down, by attacking and attacking individually until we individually can’t bear it any more, which breaks our collective strength. They can’t break us as a collective, so they work on breaking each us one by one. You are my strength, my fellow fat community. You folk are why I stand up and say “I’m not taking this shit any more.”

Individually, it’s really hard being strong in the face of all that hatred spewing in our direction. But collectively, I believe we are unstoppable. I believe we are all heroes for each other, even if it is only in tiny ways. A friendly smile, a kind word, a gesture of support.

By giving a spontaneous moment of kindness, this lovely woman jolted me back from a dark, painful place. It let me get out all the anger and hurt and frustration. It’s like her kindness broke the crust of hate that had formed from all of the abuse I’d received over the years. Which means I sit here in my morning tea break (and again in my lunch break) with all of this stuff pouring out of me at last, onto the page, finally able to write again. I can’t say I’m back to my old standards, but I have taken that first step, and it feels like a huge one.

So thank you to the lovely young woman on George Street (do leave a comment and identify yourself, I won’t publish it if you don’t want me to!) in the floral skirt and cream top – you can’t know just how important you are right now!

Look, I know I have a lot of new readers. I understand that many of you are totally new to the concept of fat activism and fat liberation. I know that when you turn on the telly or open a newspaper, you are told, over and over again, fat = unhealthy and unhealthy = bad therefore fat = bad. So what I’m saying here on this blog is a radical concept to a lot of you. The idea that someone might refuse to believe that dominant rhetoric of fat = bad and actually be happy in their fat body is possibly confronting and confusing for many of you. But it’s not a new concept. Go back to my first post… July 2009. I’ve been banging on about this for four years. In fact, I just noticed that this is my 400th post. So for four years, and with an average of 100 posts per year, I’ve been talking about this stuff for a long time now. And believe it or not, a lot of people have been talking about it for a lot longer than me. In fact, fat activism has its roots in the SIXTIES. Yes, this stuff has been around for 50 years. It’s not new.

So we need to talk about the sudden influx of you leaving comments on this blog that are never going to see the light of day. Because yes, I know for you these things are radical and new… but to we fatties in the fatosphere, we’ve heard the same old same old our whole lives. So not only do they not need to be published here to beat us over the head again and again with the same stuff that we’ve debunked time and time again, but you really don’t need to say them in the first place. WE’VE HEARD IT ALL BEFORE! SERIOUSLY, YOU ARE NOT THE FIRST PERSON TO TELL US THE THINGS BELOW!

Today I’m going to address a few of the most commonly deleted/spammed comments (other than the usual troll bullshit) that I just refuse to allow space on this blog any more, because I do know there are a lot of you newbies out there who have just started reading my blog recently and perhaps think you’re presenting some new idea to myself and other fatties in your comments. This is for you, so that you don’t make a dick of yourself any more in comment threads on fat activist blogs and other sites saying things that every fat person has heard a bajillion times already.

But fat is unhealthy!?

There is a plethora of evidence out there that debunks this myth, I’m not going to go into that here and now. It’s not my job to educate you – I’ve given you lists of resources, off you go to educate yourself. What I am going to say are the following things:

health is not a moral obligation.

Health is not a measure of human worth.

Health is arbitrary – what is “healthy” for one person, is not necessarily the same for the next.

Thin people suffer health issues too

People with illness/injury/disability are just as deserving of dignity and respect as anyone else, no matter what that illness/injury/disability may be or how it is “caused”.

But you’re driving up taxes/health insurance!!

So are people who drive cars, drink alcohol, play sport, have unprotected sex, get pregnant or get old. Among many other things. Fat people pay taxes and for health insurance too, and their taxes and health insurance dollars go into the same pool that yours do. Fat costs on public health are a false cost – if you medicalise something, then it is going to “cost” to “treat” it. If the medical profession focused on treating actual health issues and not trying to make fat people thin, those costs would all but disappear.

Well I’m all for loving your body, but within limits/not for super-obese people!

Firstly, I’m actually not interested in “body love”. Sure, it’s probably good for us to reach a place of love and acceptance of our bodies. But in the face of a world that sends us constant messages that our bodies should be something completely unattainable, I reckon if we can just get to a point where we respect our bodies as remarkable and complex systems that propel us through life, we’re doing well. If someone does love their body, then that’s a bonus and I believe that anyone is allowed to love their body, be they thin, fat or in between.

As for the “limits” to which people are included in fat activism/liberation, it has to be all of us. Not some, not to a certain point, not just the “healthy” ones, not just the ones who are cute/attractive, not just the young, white, straight, able-bodied ones. Every single one of us deserves to live our lives in dignity and peace, without fear of discrimination or vilification based on our weight and size. Every single fat person deserves positive representation. EVERY. SINGLE. FAT. PERSON.

But I’m just concerned about your health/ wellbeing!

No you’re not. If you were, you would be standing beside me fighting fat stigma and advocating for equitable health treatment for all. You don’t give a damn about the health and wellbeing of fat people. You don’t care that fat people can’t get treatment for everything from the common cold through to cancer because they are all blamed on their fatness and they’re just given a diet, not actual treatment. You don’t care that the public vilification of fat people causes depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. You don’t care that fat people are dying because they are so shamed by the medical profession that they can’t bring themselves to go back to the doctor when they are ill. Claiming you care about our wellbeing is a lie.

But you need help! Making “obesity” a disease will get you help and cheap treatment!

We do not need “help” that is against our will or counter-productive to our actual health. We don’t need “treatments” that fail and make us gain even more weight in the long term (diets and other weight loss methods), that butcher our bodies (gastric mutilation surgeries) or deplete our quality of life (weight loss medications that give us heart conditions, make us sick, give us “oily anal discharge” or a plethora of other side effects that are far worse than simply being fat). Many of us don’t need help or treatment at all. Many of us are happy just as we are and are doing fine. What we need is to be treated as human beings, and to have agency over our lives.

But don’t you want to live longer?

Since when has anyone been able to control when they die? We don’t know how long we’ll be here for. We only get one shot at it. So we best fill our lives as best we can, and not put them on hold because we don’t meet some kind of cultural measure of acceptable appearance.

You just want everyone to be fat like you!

Unlike the anti-fat camp, I believe that human bodies are naturally diverse and that some of us are meant to be fat, some are meant to be thin, and the rest are meant to range in between. I don’t want to make other people fat any more than I want to make myself thin. Unlike the anti-fat camp, I believe that all human beings are valid and equal regardless of their size or weight. I like diversity, it keeps things from getting boring.

But… everyone KNOWS [insert anti-fat trope here]

Everyone used to know the earth was flat. Everyone used to know that the sun revolved around the earth. Everyone used to know that smoking tobacco was good for you. We as human beings don’t know everything, and sometimes when we think we know things we’re wrong. Emergent science is showing us already that our pre-conceived notions of fatness have been wrong on many counts (again, off you go to do your own research, you’ve got access to all the same online tools I’ve got access to, I’m not here to do it for you), I’ve spent the past four years learning, reading expanding my world view with these facts, I’m not just making this shit up myself. Don’t make a fool of yourself by hanging on to ignorance.

You’re just making excuses to sit around on your fat ass all day and eat donuts!

If I wanted to do that, I wouldn’t need an excuse to do so. I’d just do it. I’m a grown adult and my life is mine to choose how I spend it. That said, I actually wish I had a little more time to relax and wasn’t so busy all the time. If I COULD find a way to do that, I WOULD take more time to relax, you’d better believe it!

It’s just calories in, calories out, you just need to put down the fork and move your fat ass!

Humans are not bomb calorimeters. Nor are we lawnmowers. Incidentally, do you think that no fat person ever has thought to try diet and exercise to get thin? That at almost 41 years of age it never occurred to me to try “calories in/calories out”? Do you REALLY think you’re the first person to make that suggestion to a fat person? I can guarantee you, it’s highly unlikely you’re even the first person TODAY to make that suggestion to me.

You just lack willpower!

Oh really? I engaged in a full blown restriction and purging eating disorder for twenty years, don’t talk to me about willpower. If willpower actually amounted to anything, I would be thin, ridiculously wealthy and married to Hugh Jackman by now. And put it this way, if you think I don’t have willpower, consider the fact that I haven’t smacked one of the dozens of fat hating douchecanoes I deal with every day in the mouth yet. THAT takes willpower!

But I’ve lost weight and kept it off – you can too!

Define “kept it off”. Have you passed the 5 year mark yet? No? Well since SCIENCE says that 95% of people who lose weight through dieting will regain it and more within 5 years, you need to go away and come back once you’ve kept it off for 5 years. And that’s 5 years solid, not regained it after a year or so, lost it again, regained it again, lost it again, regained, lost (which most of us can do and have done). If you have kept it off for 5 years or more, congratulations for being one of the 5% statistical anomalies. Hopefully you can understand basic percentages and realise that most of us are likely to fall into the 95% bracket.

Not to mention that what you choose to do with your body has no bearing on what I choose to do with mine. You focus on your body and life, I’ll focus on mine.

So there you have it. I’ve taken the time to address the common tropes I find in comments about, and this should save us all a lot of time. Hopefully those of you who want to tell/ask me (or any other fat people) any of the above things can save your breath and not embarrass yourselves publicly, and I shouldn’t have to deal with the same old same old in my inbox every day.

One of the things about being a highly visible, deeply combative fat activist is that everyone seems to think you’re made of steel. That you are so strong and confident, that nothing ever hurts you or makes you feel bad. Nobody believes that you have bad days, that there are times where the fight just goes out of you and you can’t face another moment of trying to claw your way out of the hatred and stigma that surrounds fat people.

But that’s not true. It’s not true in the slightest. Even the most radical fatty, the most sartorially brave, the fiercest fighter, the strongest critic of the dominant paradigm around fatness struggles. Every single one of us have those times where we just run out of oomph.

I am having one of those days today, and have been really struggling all afternoon. You see, the American Medical Association today declared obesity as a disease despite a report from their own council on science and public health urging them not to. According to the AMA, we fat people are no longer just people, we are diseased, defective, damaged, broken. We are officially diseases to be cured, prevented, eradicated. And this news has shaken me to the core. I simply feel so defeated right now, like all the work that I and many other fat activists have done, and are doing to claw back our rights and improve our quality of life has just been taken away from us.

Rationally, I know why the AMA has made this ruling. They’ve done so because big pharmaceutical companies, the weight loss industry and big health insurance companies, have lobbied, threatened, bullied and bribed them to do so. Rationally I know that the reason these big corporations have done this is because it’s in their best interest financially to do so. After all, they’re raking in HUGE amounts of money by convincing society in general that appearance = health, and that if you don’t meet the arbitrary levels of appearance that you must be sick, and surprise surprise, they have a drug, or a surgery, or a device, or a diet plan or an extra expensive health insurance plan to sell you to fix it. The weight loss industry alone was worth almost $800 million just here in Australia. Can you imagine what could be done for $800 million per year in this country? We could all have completely free health care for every Australian, more than we would ever need. People with disabilities could have all of the equipment that they would ever need, and any support and care they would ever need. No human being in Australia would go without food, water or housing. Education would be free for our whole lives, from kindergarten through any university studies that we would care to take on. Medical research into every known actual disease, from the common cold to cancer could be funded fully.

All this just from the money that the diet and weight loss industry is worth in a single year, and there would be change. In fact, if we only took their profit margin for ONE year, approximately $63 million dollars, and applied that to public funding annually – we could fund a lot of the things I’ve listed above. And that’s just here in Australia, a country of only about 22 million people. In the US, the weight loss industry is worth 66 BILLION DOLLARS. Let alone the cumulative value of the rest of the world’s weight loss industries.

There is NO WAY ON EARTH that the weight loss industry is not behind this ruling from the AMA. They have $66 billion dollars worth of power per annum in the US alone. $66 billion dollars they can spend on lobbying, propaganda, graft, legal threats to anyone who opposes them, you name it to make sure the ruling falls the way they want it to.

Rationally I know this. I know the facts. I’ve done years of my own research into this because what I was being told about my fat body wasn’t matching up to reality.

But despite that knowledge… I feel so defeated today. I feel so disheartened. I feel so cheated. I feel like I’m being marked as inferior, defective, broken. Simply because my body happens to fall on the far end of a bell curve of diverse human bodies. Simply because my body doesn’t fall in the small peak of the bell curve, the median of human bodies, a tiny arbitrary band of people who are granted the “normal” status just because they’re in the middle statistically.

But being at one end of the statistics doesn’t reflect who I am. It doesn’t reflect how I feel. It doesn’t reflect what my body can do. It doesn’t reflect my value as a human being. The AMA doesn’t know what it feels like to exist in my fat body. They don’t know what it’s like in my body to wake up after a deep sleep, stretch and feel that stretch go down to my toes and up to my outstretched fingertips. They don’t know what it feels like in my body to go swimming, feeling the cool water soft and cocooning around my body, and the wonderful sleepy feeling I get afterwards. They don’t know what it feels like in my body to walk along the waterfront near my house on a windy but crystal clear winters day, with the sun warming my back as the wind nips my nose and fingertips. They don’t know what it feels like in my body to laugh with my friends, my belly rocking, tears rolling down my face and my ribs hurting from giggling so hard. They don’t know anything about what it feels like in my body. All they know is that I am at the far end of a bell curve, and that someone out there can make money from making me hate myself and by encouraging society to hate me, and to repeatedly attempt to move myself to another point on the statistical bell curve, something we scientifically know fails for 95% of all attempts. And with that they have marked me, and people like me, as diseased, defective, broken.

The only time I feel diseased, defective, broken is when society repeatedly pushes me down because of how I look and what numbers show up on a scale when I step on it. I don’t feel those things unless I am taught to feel them. Not even when I actually suffer illness or injury.

How is simply declaring me as diseased based on statistics, and despite how I feel or the quality of my life, good for my health?

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